The good news is reality exists. The bad is it’s even stranger than people thought • Hacker News Board

Re: The good news is reality exists. The bad is it’s even stranger than people thought

#21

Post by lisper » Sat, Mar 07, 2009, 7:50 AM UTC

lisper wrote: post #19

anc2020 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded

Here it is. (Gotta love modern search tools.) Edit: couldn't figure out how to paste in pre-formatted text, so here's a link instead: http://www.flownet.com/ron/ajp_review.txt

Oh, you might find this amusing too:

http://www.wikipatents.com/7126691.html

Re: The good news is reality exists. The bad is it’s even stranger than people thought

#22

Post by scott_s » Sat, Mar 07, 2009, 1:48 PM UTC

lisper wrote: post #19

anc2020 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded

Here it is. (Gotta love modern search tools.) Edit: couldn't figure out how to paste in pre-formatted text, so here's a link instead: http://www.flownet.com/ron/ajp_review.txt

Did you feel it was a fair review? Did you take their suggestion and submit it to the Foundations of Physics journal?

Re: The good news is reality exists. The bad is it’s even stranger than people thought

#23

Post by lisper » Sat, Mar 07, 2009, 4:50 PM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #22

lisper wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here it is. (Gotta love modern search tools.) Edit: couldn't figure out how to paste in pre-formatted text, so here's a link instead: http://www.flownet.com/ron/ajp_review.txt

Did you feel it was a fair review? Did you take their suggestion and submit it to the Foundations of Physics journal?

I thought it was somewhat fair. One the one hand, it is true that the paper says nothing new. On the other hand, it doesn't claim to say anything new. It just claims to present old results in a more accessible way, which I believe it does. Furthermore, these results are clearly not widely known even within the physics community because even today you can find lots of card-carrying physicists (and a few patent examiners apparently, to say nothing of journalists) who do not understand the simple idea that measurement and entanglement are the same physical phenomenon, so clearly there is a need for some better pedagogy in this area. AJP is ostensibly devoted to physics education, which is why I chose to submit it there. So I think it would have been an appropriate venue, and I think it would have made a contribution.

On the other hand, the point that I do not have adequate references for a scholarly publication is valid. So I thought the decision not to publish it was defensible, even if I didn't agree with their reasoning.

I did not submit it to Foundations of Physics. Physics is not really my field of expertise, so the benefit to me from having an accepted peer-reviewed publication in this area is pretty small. This paper was the result of an exploration driven by personal curiosity. If self-publication on the web were not an option I might have been more motivated to polish it up and resubmit it, but it is so I wasn't.

I'm actually between gigs right now (my partner in a startup I was trying to get off the ground had to bow out) so I may try to update it and take another whack at publishing. I actually have some new ideas about how entanglement can explain the (perceived) flow of time, but the last time it took me nearly ten years to figure it out (though it all finally came together in a wonderful "aha" moment, which almost made it all worthwhile) and I have other fish to fry.